Park

RIBBON CUTTING EN FRANÇAIS

Photos by Spencer (Flasher) Tucker

Thanks to $257,000 in requirements contracts from Mayor Rudolph (Eagle)
Giuliani and Council Member June M. (Mainland) Eisland, Parks
just completed improvements to French Charley Playground in the Bronx. While
the students at Fordham University and Fordham Prep swing into the baseball
season on the four neighboring ballfields, kids can test out the playground's
improved swingsets and play equipment, made safe with new surfacing. The asphalt
has been repaved and a spray shower installed to keep kids cool this summer.
Capital touched up the playground's French frog and the parks' two gated entrances.

French Charley Playground, where kids delight in the physical pleasure of play,
was once a bistro. French Charley's Restaurant stood there in the late nineteenth
century, serving up treats from the European continent. On Wednesday, April
11, with French coffee, croissants, and joie de vivre to go around, Parkies
and community residents celebrated the playground, its history, and the new
improvements.

IN TIME FOR THE BASEBALL SEASON PARKS DEDICATES A NEW BALLFIELD

The ballfield formerly known as Glendale was renamed on Saturday, April 7 for
a child who played in the ballfield and the community leader he grew up to be.
Richard Koehler was born in Glendale, Queens in 1940. A sports enthusiast, he
spent 20 years of his adulthood coaching young people in the games and at the
neighborhood haunts of his childhood. For his commitment to the fun and friendship
that team sports foster, Parks dedicated a ballfield in his honor.

Glendale Playground is enriched by teamwork on and off the field. Baseball
leagues promote a spirit of cooperation that gets carried into local civic work.
Glendale Cowanus, the Glendale Civic Patrol, and Community Board Five work with
Parks and local officials to make Glendale Playground an outdoor gymnasium where
people of all ages recreate and a green town square where residents of varied
backgrounds meet and form friendships. In honoring Richard Koehler, Parks honors
the spirit of teamwork and the people who make Glendale Playground a winner
among parks.

BROADWAY STARTS AND SCHOOLCHILDREN SING AND SOW SEEDS FOR
GREEN-UP DAY

In preparation for the eighth annual Parks "Green-Up Day," over 150 Manhattan
middle school students huddled around Commissioner Stern and Broadway stars
Maureen Davis and Ben Wright yesterday to sing sons and sow seeds at Columbus
Circle in Central Park.

Commissioner Stern quizzed the students in attendance on the history of the
nearby Maine Monument and Columbus Statue, however no one knew that the U.S.
battleship Maine, the monument's namesake, was sunk in 1898 in the port of Havanna,
Cuba.